NEW upgraded Octopus "In Home Display"

Gerry1

Netexporter said:

The traditional IHD doesn't work without a mobile signal.

@Netexporter Are you sure?

I thought the connection between the Gas Meter and the IHD uses ZigBee, while the connection between the Comms Hub and the DCC uses cellular or Long Range Radio?

Netexporter

I don't have a gas meter but my IHD was inoperable the whole week that my local phone mast was off.

FreeBear

MouldyOldDough said:

I thought that a normal IHD diisplayed usage virtually up to date ?

Mine does lag behind by a few minutes (especially gas) but not days or even hours ?
I thought that was the point of them - to show usage in a real time basis? 

The IHD does indeed display usage as it happens (gas only gets updated every 30 mins or so). Usage via the Octopus web site depends on data pulled from the DCC (except for the realtime electricity consumption), so there will always be a lag there. The app uses a different server and collates data for today from the Home Mini - If you look at weekly/monthly data, the information appears to be pulled from the DCC.

VoucherMan

Netexporter said: you can get real time consumption on your phone or PC, amongst other things.

Has anyone figured out a way to connect the Home Mini to a PC without a smartphone? I've tried the Octopus app on a couple of emulators, but neither has a bluetooth connection, so the Home Mini won't register!

wrf12345

Or got the Mini to connect when you are using the phone as a 4G LTE hotsport, I gave up but there may be a way to do it

FreeBear

VoucherMan said:

Netexporter said: you can get real time consumption on your phone or PC, amongst other things.

Has anyone figured out a way to connect the Home Mini to a PC without a smartphone? I've tried the Octopus app on a couple of emulators, but neither has a bluetooth connection, so the Home Mini won't register!

Its not just the bluetooth that will trip you up, You also need geolocation enabled (so another app to emulate/fake).

VoucherMan

FreeBear said:

Its not just the bluetooth that will trip you up, You also need geolocation enabled (so another app to emulate/fake).

Geo-location isn't a problem. I've been using that since COVID days for the Responder app. As far as I know, Bluetooth is the only sticking point. At least Bluestacks acknowledges its absence, so may include it one day.

bob2302

There is no bluetooth involved, it communicates with the hub via zigbee, which few mobile devices support anyway.  You don't need geolocation once it's running, if you don't have a device capable of setting it up, just ask someone with a mobile to set it up for you. If it matters to you I would suggest complaining to Octopus, there's no obvious reason to need geolocation.

It is IMO greatly overrated. A normal IHD updates electricity usage and power every 10s instead of 60s.IHDs are also better for detecting abnormal usage.   

VoucherMan

bob2302 said:

There is no bluetooth involved, 

https://octopus.energy/octopus-home-mini-faq/#ohmsetup

Check your phone is connected to WiFi (you'll need a 2.4GHz WiFi network, it won't work with 5GHz), and Bluetooth is on.

FreeBear

bob2302 said:

There is no bluetooth involved, it communicates with the hub via zigbee, which few mobile devices support anyway.  You don't need geolocation once it's running, if you don't have a device capable of setting it up, just ask someone with a mobile to set it up for you. If it matters to you I would suggest complaining to Octopus, there's no obvious reason to need geolocation.

Bluetooth is needed for the initial configuration (setting WiFi credentials). It could be done with an access point & minimal web server built in to the Home Mini, but I suspect there is insufficient memory for this.

I raised the issue of geolocation with Octopus but never got a reply as to why they thought it necessary.